Rowe
My Rowe Ancestor is Zula Violet Rowe, click to see what I know.
The Surnames Of Ireland by Edward MacLysaght states:
(pg. 261)"Rowe See Roe."
(pg. 259) "Roe This name has several origins; it is a synonym of O Ruaidh-see Ormond; it may be English, synonymous wityh Rowe; or an abbreviaation of MacEnroe; or an epithet, i.e. ruadh (red). MIF Map Waterford.
(pg.240) "Ormond O Ruaidh (ruadh, red). The fact that this sept is found in the Ormond country is coincidental. O Ruaidh is also anglicized Roe. MIF Map Cork-Waterford."
More Irish Families by Edward MacLysaght stated:
(pg 182-183)ROE, Rowe ORMOND MacENROE "The
surnames Roe and Rowe are now fairly numerous:in the year 1890
there were 42 births registered, 21 for Roe and 21 for Rowe, two-thirds
of them in each case being in Leinster:the three years 1864-1866
averaged 60 (37 Roe, 23 Rowe) with a similar Leinster
prepodnderance....we find the name-spelt Roe, Rowe, Rhuoe...-
extremely numerous in Co. Cork, especially in the baronies of
East and West Carbery, and also in counties Limerick, Tipperary,
Kilkenny, Kildare, Meath, Carlow and Wexford. A curious equation
appears in the 1659 "census" for East Carbery, Co. Cork,
whee Buoige and Dinane are included in the Roe total. Possibly
this was a clerical error. The 1665 Hearth Money Rollsfor Co.
Tipperary include no fewer than 60 householders of the name. The
chief reason for the subsequent diminution ws that even as late
as the seventeenth century Roe was not as a rule a true surname:
it was an epithet (cf. O'Conor Roe) like Reagh, Oge, Bane etc.,
which Petty's enumerators treated as a surname. Nevertheless it
has been perpetuated as such in a number of cases. It must be
remembered, too, that Rowe and Roe are also indigenous surnames
in Endgland, occasionally bought to Ireland by settlers at
various times. Fynes Moryson, for example, mentions a Capt. Roe
who commanded Elizabeth's troops in Co. Louth
hThe old Gaelic-Irish surname O Ruaidh was at first anglicizied O'Rooe
etc.:this belongs to west Waterford and east Corkand so appears
in sixteenth century records such as the Fiants, but it has since
been corrupted to Ormond- Ormond, i.e. east Munster, (Urmhumhan
in Irish), formerly embraced the greater part of Co. Kilkenny,
while in 1375 Adam and David Rowe were parliamentary collectors
for Kilkenny.
Another name which is sometimes abbreviated to Roe is Mac
Conrubha, normally modernized as MacEnroe. This is the name of a
Breffny sept in counties Leitrim and Cavan.
An interesting character of the early seventeenth century was Sir
Thomas Roe, under whom the first Irish settlement in America was
made in 1612-it was later dispersed. I do not know his origin.
Four eighteenth and nineteenth century alumni of Trinity College,
Dublin, are noteworthy;two were clergymen,viz., Rev. Peter Roe (1778-1842),
a famous preacher, and Rev. Richard Roe (1765-1853), a pioneer in
stenography;and two were medical men, viz.,George Hamilton Roe (1795-1873),
who made his reputation as a physician in London, and Samuel
Black Roe (1830-1913), a celebrated army surgeon who was twice
sheriff of his native Co. Cavan-the others were from counties
Wexford and Leix. Another notable surgeon, not of T.C.D. but of
Queen's College, Galway, was Dr. William Roe (1841-1892).
Of the three great distiller families of Dublin, Poweer, Jamesoon
and Roe, the last named may be mantioned here on account of the
fact that a large part of the fortune they made, when the
distilling of Irish whiskey was more profitable than it is in
this competitive age, was spent on the restoration of Christ
Church Cathedral, as the Guinneess family devoted theirs to a
similar purpose on the other Cathedral, St Patrick's. The Jameson
family was of Clacmannaaan, Scotland, and came to Ireland in the
mid-eighteenth century. Guinness and Power were treated of in
Irish Families. Map"
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